We had a post a couple of days ago discussing Wealth Inequality (Celebrating Income Inequality) and the evil it is portrayed to be. The video below is now going viral with the opposite take. Unfortunately, it takes the EVIL 1%’ers turn that was made popular with the OWS dirtbags. He does it without the dirtbag though. He never proposes a fix, just vilifies the rich.
So, here you go:
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My. That was retarded. So many degrees of stupidity, I am not sure where to start. Okay, let’s just jump right in.
It didn’t even attempt to explain how the fact that some people are rich hurts other people. It doesn’t. The only thing it hurts is the sense of jealousy and envy some have. Rich people don’t pick my pocket or break my leg and they aren’t harming me in any way, shape or form.
The idea that if they didn’t have their money other people would is stupid on its face. Other people getting less doesn’t get you more. Not in the real world.
As usual, they bitch about things being less equal now than in the 1970s. Hmmmm. What does it matter? Lower income people today have cell phones and air conditioning and microwaves and digital television and computers and all kinds of shit that nobody had in the 1970s. Standards of living by any sane measure are increasing. Hell, when I graduated college in 1990 a cell phone was a status symbol. Now the fucking homeless have them.
Does the CEO work 380 times harder than his average employee? That is stupid and irrelevant. Who ever thought you get paid for how hard you work? I worked my hardest as a private in the Army. I worked a hell of a lot harder than Michael Moore ever worked. Guess what. Moore makes a hell of a lot more than I did. You don’t get paid based on how hard you work. You get paid based on how profitable you are. Some CEOs are probably 3,800 times more profitable than their average employee. Some probably have skill sets that are 38,000 times less common.
Notice he also doesn’t have a solution. He just whines. One of the hardest things for moonbats to understand is that you can’t cure poverty by giving people money. It just doesn’t work. We spend 160 times more on welfare (adjusting for inflation) than we did in the 1960s and the poverty rate is about the same as the 1960s. Taking money from the rich and giving to the poor would just make every American poorer.
This shit is pure economic muggle thinking. It is propaganda.
It is a video that would have made Hugo Chavez proud. He lived to end income inequality. As a result, his oil-rich nation is in shambles. It has one of the world’s highest rates of inflation, largest fiscal deficits, and fastest growing debts. Despite a boom in oil prices, the country’s infrastructure is in disrepair—power outages and rolling blackouts are common—and it is more dependent on crude exports than when Chávez arrived. Venezuela is the only member of OPEC that suffers from shortages of staples such as flour, milk, and sugar.
Why? Because he harassed the wealthy, sucked up their profits, undermined markets and corrupted the economy in the name of ending income inequality.
I’d like to punch the cocky little ignorant fuck narrating that video right in the mouth. It is fools like him who unleash our own Chavez wannabes in this country.
Didn’t we just see that video?
It will convince the typical low-info voter. They will jump to the obvious fix, and say “Daddy Barack! Can you please take their money so it can be fair?” And because he cares about “fairness,” he will tell the GOP Senators at their dinner tonight that it is time to get to the back of the bus.
I feel like we are attempting to hold back a tsunami of stupidity with a broom.
I like that analogy. It is very fitting. And depressing.
Indeed. Well put.
I have nothing to add. RD knocked it outta the park, above. So much stupidity…
RD, the other issue, and my friend and I have this conversation all the time (what up Z), is the lefts insistance on using unquantifiable terms. you say you can’t cure poverty by giving people money. well, you can ever really cure poverty, because it is a relative term. As you pointed out, the people in poverty now are relitively rich compared to the poor in the 60′s or 70′s. that level is set, relative to the “rich”. you can never win that argument because it is an ever moving target.
The other issue you hit head on is that wealth is not a finite thing (it my have been back in the gold standard days thoretically, but i do not have the education to speak on that) just because one person or group of people are “rich” doesn’t mean they are that way at the expense of others. If that were true, your neighbor getting laid off from work would/could mean you will be getting a raise. it doesn’t work like that.
The problem is the public in general does not understand, in theory how our economic system is suppose to work, and therefore are unable to tell when gov’t intervention and policies inhibit and obstruct that system. then, becuase of their ignorance, the left can blame any precieved failures on the “free market system” and lack of gov’t intervention, when it is gov’t intervention that causes so many of the failures.
Anyway, my long winded explaination of why i agree with you totally.
I made a point similar to your first three years ago in a post for which I am particularly proud. Check it out: http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=19105
Your second comment is exactly correct. Wealth isn’t money and it isn’t finite. It doesn’t move like cash and the wealth of one person has nothing to do with the poverty of others. There is, however, no point in trying to teach people that. It is not only counter-intuitive, people don’t want to believe it.
Thanks for that post RD. Im sorry to say i was not following along at that time, but glad i got to read that.
“They don’t want to believe it” is exactly right. That’s what separates adults from children. “Shit, Santa isn’t real. Ok, moving on.”
But keeping on the topic of income mobility, here is a question I like to ask people: “is eliminating poverty a realistic goal”
If the answer is yes, then the conversation is over for the most part. If no, then the goal would then have to be a system that “allowed” people the most efficient means to get out of poverty.
If they are still listening, then you might have a real conversation on your hands.
(and like fasttimes says, poverty is relative and must be defined. Indeed, most of the folks in the US have no idea what real poverty looks like. In fact, most of the folks in the US have no idea what US poverty looked like just 50, 60, or 70 years ago. Most would be shocked to take a stroll through parts of India, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, etc. To think that “poor” in the US have are fat, have cell phones, satellite TV, air conditioning, and may even own their own home is hilarious. I’d love to watch the “US poor” explain how bad they have it to the truly poor in the countries mentioned above. But of course, poor, and poverty are undefinable terms for most politicians. In fact, most politicians only succeed by not defining things, for that would require them take a stand.)
I had a colleague, named Dwayne. Dwayne was an enormous black man. He had a deep baritone voice and a friendly, funny demeanor. He also had a hard-on for playing the race card.
He saw institutional racism in ever corner of American life. I had a project in Equatorial Guinea (bunghole of Africa) and Dwayne saw first hand what poverty truly is.
He apologized and said that he would never again complain about the United States of America or how “poorly” black folks live here. I never heard another complaint on the subject.
Must we explain EVERYTHING to these fucktards?
Econ 101: opportunity cost is the amount of item a that you must give up in order to produce a certain amount of item b (guns and butter being the usual examples). An economy has the capability of producing 10 units total. 5 of a and 5 of b, or 7 of a and 3 of b…etc. This economy will never be able produce 10 units of a AND 10 units of b simultaneously…unless…
According to Schumpeter’s theory on technological change, an economy can increase the total number of units it can produce by bettering it’s technology (shifting the PPF to the right, for all the econ geeks out there). However, better technology only comes from research, development and innovation. All of these things have an opportunity cost as well. In fact, in a perfectly competitive equilibrium, there is no money left over to fund such things. So the excess profit has to come from somewhere…and it sure as hell isn’t the bottom 30%.
Enter the top 20%. These individuals are the ones generating the profits that fund the technological advancement needed to provide cell phones to everyone who is condemning them as evil CEO monsters.
So yeah, take their money and redistribute it amongst everyone else and see how much better off you will be. Based on my personal experience, the sale of lottery tickets and cigarettes would go through roof…
Glad to know that I ain’t throwing that tuition money down the drain, little girl.
And yet so many of my classmates would agree with that video.
You can lead a horse to water…
You can lead a horse to water, but eventually they’ll just want to stop and wait for the surrogate daddy to bring them your water, because they’re lazy, simple-minded, thieving democrats.
Something about the way you are posting images is making the off topic page go squirrly, Nota. I have fixed the last three. You make a change to your embed settings lately?
No, but I noticed that my last couple images – when posted – jacked up the reply box for the comment on the public pages. It went away on both of them, so I figured it was a Windows8 thing, maybe. Turns out it was an RD Walker thing.
I’ll check it out.
Yeah, It is something in the part of the embed code that has alignment and shit. If I pull out the part between IMG and SRC everything corrects.
I think it has to be the bottom comment rather than a reply to screw things up. try that.
Looks like you fixed it.
Oh, I absolutely L-O-V-E love this picture by the way!
Okay – I got it. I had alignment set to left, because part of the pic was cut off. I’ll just use a smaller size when posting pics in a reply.
Roger. Thanks. 600 works for the first comment. They get narrower as you get into responses.
I’m going to bed. Clean up this mess, turn out the lights and lock the door when you leave.